Posts Tagged ‘skull’

I hinted at another post in last round, and here I deliver. (The “amazeballs” in the title is a running joke with our Xmas guests here in England, but it applies to the subject of these images, too… which will be the subject of a future blog post involving a dissection of the subject!)

This will end the 2014 round of Mystery Anatomy. What 2015 will bring, I am not sure, but here we have 15 images for my 15th mystery CT post and 2015 around the corner.

I do have a new, fun regular anatomy post idea planned for 2015 but I’ll explain that later.

Stomach-Churning Rating: 2/10; digital images; the cadaver is gutted but I am chuffed.

Identify (1) the animal shown in the 15 slices, to species level (max. 5 pts), and then the major features (anatomical regions) evident in as many of the 15 slices as you can; details help (max. 5 pts for thoroughness and accuracy).

Construction of the Phyletisches Museum in Jena, Germany began on Goethe’s birthday on August 28, 1907. The Art Nouveau-styled museum was devised by the great evolutionary biologist, embryologist and artist/howthefuckdoyousummarizehowcoolhewas Ernst Haeckel, who by that time had earned fame in many areas of research (and art), including coining the terms ontogeny (the pattern of development of an organism during its lifetime) and phylogeny (the pattern of evolution of lineages of organisms through time) which feature prominently in the building’s design and exhibits (notice them intertwined in the tree motif below, on the front of the museum). Ontogeny and phylogeny, and the flamboyant artistic sensibility that Haeckel’s work exuded, persist as themes in the museum exhibits themselves. Haeckel also came up with other popular words such as Darwinism and ecology, stem cell, and so on… yeah the dude kept busy.

I first visited the Phyletisches Museum about 10 years ago, then again this August. Here are the sights from my latest visit: a whirlwind ~20 minute tour of the museum before we had to drive off to far-flung Wetzlar. All images are click-tastic for embiggenness.

Stomach-Churning Rating: 3/10 for some preserved specimens. And art nouveau.

Lobe-finned fishes (Sarcopterygii)- great assortment including a fossil coelacanth.

Lungfish body and skeleton.

Coelacanth!

Coelacanth staredown!

On into tetrapods– a Fire Salamander (Salamandra salamandra)! We love ’em, and the museum had several on display- given that we were studying them with x-rays, seeing the skeleton and body together here in this nice display was a pleasant surprise.

A tortoise shell and skeleton, with a goofball inspecting it.

In a subtle nod to recurrent themes in evolution, the streamlined bodies of an ichthyosaur and cetacean shown in the main stairwell of the museum, illustrating convergent evolution to swimming adaptations.

Phylogeny of reptiles, including archosaurs (crocs+birds).

Gnarly model of an Archaeopteryx looks over a cast of the Berlin specimen, and a fellow archosaur (crocodile). The only extinct dinosaur on exhibit!

Kiwi considers the differences in modern bird palates: palaeognathous like it and fellow ratites/tinamous (left), and neognathous like most living birds.

Hyraxes, which Prof. Martin Fischer, longtime curator of the Phyletisches Museum, has studied for many years. Rodent-like elephant cousins.

Old exhibit at the Phyletisches Museum, now gone: Forelimbs of an elephant posed in the same postures actually measured in African elephants, for the instant of foot touchdown (left pic) and liftoff (right pic). Involving data that we published in 2008!

One of Haeckel’s residences, across the street from the museum. There is also a well-preserved house of his that one can visit, but I didn’t make it there. I heard it’s pretty cool.

Jena is tucked away in a valley in former East Germany, with no local airport for easy access- but get to Leipzig and take a 1.25 hour train ride and you’re there. Worth a trip! This is where not just ontogeny and phylogeny were “born”, but also morphology as a modern, rigorous discipline. Huge respect is due to Jena, and to Haeckel, whose quotable quotes and influential research still resonate today, in science as well as in art.

Welcome back to my two-part British Museum series; I covered crocodiles before. Here, I celebrate the less common creatures depicted in human art, design and culture. And we begin back in Egypt, with a bit of crocodile to provide a nice segue:

With the head and torso of a hippo, the legs of a lion and the tail of a crocodile (not easily visible here), the Egyptian goddess Taweret just rocks. More info here.

Anatomy in art is best when the anatomy is actually used as a substrate for art, as in this later piece from Egypt, and another piece that follows it:

Scapula (shoulder blade) from an ox, with Roman enscriptions. Click to embovine for closer examination and explanation.

~8000 BC red deer antler headdress from England (click to enstaggen for closer examination and text details in upper left). Picturing an Ice Age shaman wearing this gives me a sense of awe.

Human anatomy in our artwork, to my mind, reaches its pinnacle in Aztec religious masks like this, which was too cool to omit:

Use of a human skull to make a stunning mask decorated with obsidian, representing Tezcatlipoca, the Smoking Mirror and master of creation/destruction; slayer of Quetzalcoatl. Badass dial turned to 11! He is also sometimes represented as a jaguar.

Continuing the mask theme, the following masks show off sawfish, sharks and other species from the region:

Awesome diversity of ceremonial fish masks from Africa.

Lions find their way into plenty of artwork such as European royal heraldry. Yet the huge depictions of an Assyrian lion hunt in the British Museum are not only anatomically impressive but also evocative of a time long past, when Asian lions ranged far across human territories. In viewers today, however, they may inspire more sympathy for the fleeing lions than awe for the lordly charioteers, horsemen and archers that pursue them.

I finish with some statues and other depictions of animals that are more globally uncommon than lions:

You don’t see tapirs much in art but here seems to be one, as a bronze statuette from ~400s AD in China.

I love Indian artwork for its plethora of proboscideans. Here, a statue of the Indian elephant diety Ganesha from ~750 AD, engaged in a dance. As the placard explains, Ganesha got his elephant’s head when Shiva freaked out and cut off the human one, then promised to make amends by substituting the head of the next animal he saw.

More dancing! North Chinese (~11-12th century) ceramic plate depicting a funky, vaguely humanoid dancing bear tied to a pole. The anatomical exaggerations here make the piece more memorable and vaguely demonic, but not so much as the next item.

The dance is over, thanks to ass demons. That’s right, ass demons. Many Burmese were surely frightened or inspired by these terracota warriors from 1400s AD. These warriors represented king Mara’s forces that attempted to disrupt the Buddha’s meditation. As ass demons would tend to do. (I hate it when that happens)

I hope you enjoyed this brisk dance through atypical animals and their anatomy in artwork! Coming next, a look at one of the greatest anatomists ever.

Hey, Christofer Clemente sent me these photos of a ~10cm long skull found by a student on a beach in Perth, Australia ( sent to Chris by Christine Cooper from ECU in Perth). What is it?

I figured I’d feed it to our mystery anatomy gurus for some fun, and see what comes up. You must justify your answer to get points. Convincing us with links to other photos/images will help. I have my ideas what it is, but they kind of suck, because I suck at skull anatomy.

Bonus points for incorporating Australian slang into your answer or beachy imagery/jokes.

No rhyming, unless the rhyming is using silly Australian-ish lingo like adding “-idoo” to the end of a word, or making up Dr-Seussian Oz-ish words.

Less words, more pictures in this post, and I’ll get the one lame cake joke out of the way early. I’ve nearly finished my research blitz through the postcranial material of the NHM-Tring’s osteological collection and have made some pit-stops for cake skulls now and then when I see one that pleases me. Now I shall present a survey of some of the species I’ve examined. I’ll proceed up from the base of the crown clade of living birds (Neornithes/Aves; the most recent common ancestor of living birds and all its descendants) and first take a tour of Palaeognathae; the ratites and kin; then move another step up into the Neognathae, first featuring the lineage featuring the ground fowl (Galliformes) and then the waterfowl (Anseriformes). If all this taxonomy and phylogeny is a bit much, check out this page for a brush-up on the bushy branches of bird biodiversity.

First, lots of bones of our cast of currasows, chachalacas, cassowaries and other kooky characters. And then, perhaps, a stop to the excessive alliteration. Finally, I will finish with some examples of species oddity (hat tip to Chris Hadfield).

Stomach-Churning Rating: 2/10- some bony pathologies but still just dry bones. Minimal cake jokes, and no filthy swearing this time.

BRING ON THE BONES:

My photographs are shown with kind permission from the Natural History Museum, London.

Exploded skull of an ostrich, Struthio camelus. This kind of careful preparation takes crazy skill, and creates a thing of rare beauty.

Imposing skull of a cassowary, Casuarius casuarius, with a rather worn head casque.

Mummified Owen’s Little Spotted Kiwi, Apteryx owenii. The feathers were still soft and fluffy, but I would not call this specimen cuddly.

Dorsal view of the back/hips of the Great Spotted Kiwi, Apteryx haasti. I like this photo and am not sure why. The symmetry and shading pleases me, I guess.

Front view of the back/hips of the Great Spotted Kiwi, Apteryx haasti, watching over my laptop and watching me while I write this blog on my laptop… so meta(ornithine)!

Wing of a kiwi, showing the fragile bones and feather attachments. “Apteryx” = “no wings”… well not quite. Click to emkiwi(?) so you can identify the individual bones, from the humerus right down to the fingers! I love this specimen.

The titanic left leg (in front view) of the Elephant Bird, Aepyornis maximus, from Madagascar, with a small moa nearby in left side view. There’s so much awesomeness about elephant birds I don’t know where to start, but this is one good place to do so.

The smaller end of the palaeognath scale: a mummified Undulated Tinamou, Crypturellus undulatus. Somehow the head got stuck into the abdominal cavity underneath the sternum, so this tinamou almost had its head up its arse. A tinamou with head in its proper position looks and sounds like this (video).

And now we take a left turn into the Galloanseres, most basal branch of the neognath birds, to see some of the neglected, strange early branches off from the “main line” that led to the modern diversity of ducks, geeses and swans (Anatinae, Anserinae).

Screamers (Anhimidae) are to Anseriformes as megapodes (see below; brush turkeys) are to Galliformes. By that I mean that both screamers and megapodes are very early branches off the main line of their respective lineages’ evolution, and both are quite strange when seen in that context… an unfair one, frankly; over-focused on the most familiar, “modern” or most speciose group. More about this issue further below.

Horned Screamer, Anhima cornuta; similar carpometacarpal spurs as in Chauna.

Torso of a screamer seen in top view. Nice narrow body, and no uncinate processes (spur-like bony struts that cross the ribs and act as levers for the muscles that move the ribcage during breathing)

The long, gracile, clawed toes of a screamer. Those toes, especially as they belong to an animal called a screamer, are spooky for me. Note also: very little toe-webbing for a “waterfowl.”

Not to be outdone, on the Galliformes side of Galloanserae, we have some funky headgear in the Maleo (a megapode bird/Megapodiidae; a very basal branch of “brush turkeys” and kin) and curassows (part of the Cracidae; odd South American birds whose males make booming sounds, presumably using their head-casques as resonating chambers?):

Australian brush-turkeys, Alectura lathami, at the Alma Park Zoo near Brisbane, Australia; they run wild there. Here they are doing what they are best known for: making a mound-like nest. We were doing kangaroo biomechanics experiments and they were everywhere. I was in awe to see such exotic (to me) birds; locals seemed not so enthused (the birds are loud and make a lot of mess).

Skull of Helmeted Curassow, Crax/Pauxi pauxi, showing that resonating chamber. Along with this boom-boom-room, the male uses a piece of food that he holds to draw in the female; if she takes it, then it’s sexy time.

Foot of a Siberian Black Grouse, Tetrao tetrix (nothing to do with a certain videogame), with and without flesh. Regard the broad, feathered feet, well insulated and with plenty of surface area for prancing around in the snow or moorlands. Tetrao engage in a cool display pattern called lekking, in which the males group together and show off to watching females.

A theme in the section above that is not to be missed is that there is some amazing disparity of anatomical forms in these basal lineages of poultry-relatives. Don’t dismiss the Galloanserae as just boring food-birds! Heaps of not-so-well-studied species exist here, surely with a treasure trove of cool neontological and evolutionary questions waiting for the right person to ask! Darwin’s chickens may get their share of neglect, but that pales in comparison to how little we understand about many basal Galloanserae.

What a lot of people think of as a “ground fowl” or galliform way of life is more of a way of life somewhat typical of the Phasanidae- chickens, pheasants and their familiar kin. Megapodes, curassows, guans, grouse and other Galliformes do not necessarily do things in the “typical” ground fowl way, much as the earlier branches of the Anseriformes don’t always look/act like “proper water fowl” (i.e. Anatidae). The phenomenon at play here is one of the great bugaboos in biology: essentialism— the often implicit misconception that variation away from some abstract ideal is negligible, uninteresting or just not conceivable due to mental blinders. When we say something like “the chicken is a fascinating species” we are sliding down the essentialistic slope. There is no “the chicken.” Not really. Oh dear, speaking of slippery slopes, I’d best stop here before I start talking about species concepts. And no one wants that to happen! Anyway, essentialism still pervades a lot of modern scientific thinking, and has its place as a conceptual crutch sometimes. But in biology, essentialism can be very insidious and misleading. It burrows in deep into the scientific mind and can be hard to root out. Unfortunately, it is entrenched in a lot of science education, as it makes things easier to teach if you sweep aside the exceptions to the essentialist “rules” in biology. I catch myself thinking in static, essentialist ways sometimes. The punishment is no cake for a week; so awful. 🙂

And speaking of “normal” or “typical,” morphology is of course often not that way even within a species, age class or gender. Pathology is a great example; by definition it is abnormal. It is a shattering of the “essence” of animals, brought on by some malady.

Next I’ve highlighted some of the amazing pathologies I’ve seen in the Tring skeletons. There have been so many I’ve been unable to keep track of them– some of these birds had the stuffing beaten out of them, and I’m not talking about Thanksgiving turkeys. Some were captive animals, in which the pathology might be blamed on living an inappropriate environment, but some were wild-caught — given the extreme pathologies, it’s a wonder those even survived to be found, but perhaps less a surprise that they were caught.

BONES GONE BONKERS:

View of left knee of a specimen of the Highland Guan, Penelopina nigra, showing some nasty osteoarthritis around the whole joint. Eew. A happier Guan sounds like this.

Femora and tibiotarsi of the Blue-throated Piping Guan, Aburria cumanensis. Amazing pathology involving the left femur (broken, rehealed) and tibiotarsus (secondary infection?). Interestingly, the non-fractured limb also showed some pathology, perhaps indicating general infection and/or arthritis in reaction to the severe damage to the other leg, or just increased load-bearing on that leg.

Little Chachalaca, Ortalis motmot, showing a broken and rehealed right femur and the tibiotarsus. As in the guan above, this animal was not walking for many weeks; its femur had snapped in two, but somehow melted back together. The tibiotarsus didn’t look too great, either; lumpy and bendy. In better times, the Chachalaca does the cha-cha like this.

These two specimens blew my mind. On the left is a normal Tetrao tetrix (Black Grouse); on the right is one hybridized with another (unknown) species.

In the picture above, what amazed me first was the very unusual flattened pelvis/synsacrum of Tetrao, which characteristically is light and wide. But in the hybrid this morphology was completely gone; the pelvis had a more standard “galliform” (read: Phasianid)-like shape, deeper and narrower and more solid in build. I am guessing that the hybrid was a cross with a pheasant like Phasianus itself, whose anatomy would be more like this. Somewhere in here there is a fantastic evo-devo/morphometrics project waiting to happen.

That’s my quick specimen-based tour of “basal birds”. Beyond these two clades of Palaeognathae and Galloanseres, there lies the forebidding territory of Neoaves: much of living avian diversity, and extremely contentious in its phylogenetic relationships. I’m tackling them next for my research on the evolution of the patella/kneecap. But first, I’ll be at the NHM-Tring today for a whirlwind tour through the respectably speciose “normal” Galloanseres clades of Phasianidae and Anserinae+Anatidae, so off I go! (It’s my wife’s birthday celebration, so cake may have to wait for later this time)

So what do you think? What’s your favourite neglected “primitive” bird group (more apropos: early branching avian lineage that may still be very specialized, rare and poorly understood), or cool factoid about palaeognaths and basal neognaths?

No quaggas were harmed during the writing of this post. Polly wanna quagga?

Last time I gave a quick overview of the museum and anatomy’s long history at the RVC. I’ll cover some of the cool skulls we have on display first, then in future posts the dissected specimens, then some of the neat birds and other exotic animals, and I’ll return to bones with a general overview of rockin’ skeletons at the end. Or something like that order. I am a fickle beast and might do otherwise. On with the show then!

So, skulls… I dread talking about skulls. As people on my research team know, I have at least one Cardinal Rule: I don’t work on skulls or heads. Except maybe skulls of Cardinals? Skull anatomy is too complex for my feeble old mind to grasp, and there are too many people working on them that are really great scientists, so I feel I have little to contribute to that area. But I do appreciate them, even if with a glazed look of apprehension and lack of comprehension. 🙂

It may not surprise you to learn that we have dog skulls in our vet anatomy museum, but you might be impressed by the selection! We have a case full of a diverse set of domestic breeds and non-domestic species (fox, wolf, etc.) of canids, shown above. There is bound to be a good research project in there somewhere- the plasticity of dog skeletons under humans’ artificial selection has done some amazing, and disturbing, stuff, especially to skulls and heads!

But I’m a cat lover and, lest the felids get jealous and enact their final vengeance upon us all, let me move quickly to our felid skull collection:

Yep, not just domestic cats but a nice assortment of lions, tigers and other hypercarnivorous predators! Many from local zoos, especially London Zoo over the past centuries/decades.

Not to be outdone, the ungulates are braying for predationattention, so let’s give them some love:

With some requisite horses thrown in but also quite a few exotic species! And right next to them is another case full of coneheads:

With one prominent member that definitely deserves a closeup, since giraffes are what got this blog started, and this is a lovely old ?male? specimen with honking big ossicones:

Look closely at the right side of the mandible (lower jaw) of that hippo and observe the lumpy bit in the middle of the jaw, which would be inside the cheek in life. That is apparently (I am no skull pathologist by any stretch) an impacted or otherwise severely wonky tooth, and it shows some signs of having been operated on, presumably to keep it from puncturing the cheek or getting infected. Ouch! (For comparison see this more normal, more toothsome skull) It is unilateral (just right side) so I presume this is a sound, if rough, diagnosis. Anyway, stunning skull nonetheless!

Stunning as that may be, archosaurs aren’t going to take this skull-off lying down! Here is one of our crocodylian species; an American Alligator (I think, but I know if I am wrong one of my readers will steer me to an alternative ID, presumably a common caiman, which I know we also have, along with a Tomistoma), with a turtle and python cowering behind it:

Indeed, some Alligator teeth, with a horse jaw on display, make a lovely halo-like effect when viewed from a certain angle, in a set of shelves devoted to the diversity of tooth forms and functions:

But let’s get real, folks. Fish (OK systematists, non-tetrapod vertebrate) skulls could be said to blow away the diversity of tetrapod skulls. Or at least that’s what the wolffish is trying to tell us, from his vantage point in a display about jaws and ears (more evolutionary context, yay!):

And because I am not one to argue with a wolffish, I will let him have the last word. Hope you enjoyed another quick tour! I’ve only scratched the surface of our selection of skulls; there are plenty more good ones, so come visit sometime!